CHAPTER FIVE

As they approached the entrance to the horse stables Tracey leaned forward and tapped her mother, who was driving, on the shoulder, indicating that she wanted her to turn in.

"No Tracey. You just got out of hospital and Doc Thomas said you were to rest," her mother replied.

Tracey tapped harder.

Owen, seeing his mother take a deep breath, stepped in. "Tracey, everyone is doing as they're supposed to and I told you this morning, CJ is fine. Harry has stayed with him since he was brought in and his report this morning was that he would make a full recovery. Everything's fine, so why don't you do mom a favour and rest, just for today, hmm?"

Tracey's response was to glare at him, but she did slump back into her seat.

Leonora gave her youngest a look of gratitude.



The house was a lot larger than Caitlyn had originally anticipated. But then if they operate as a hotel during summer what did you expect? she berated herself.

The trip from the hospital had been educational as far as Caitlyn was concerned. It had been interesting to see how Tracey communicated with her family and made her wishes known, without saying a word.

As David helped her out of the car and Owen helped Tracy, the man who had been at the hospital with them came up.

"Hey Tracey, welcome home. I thought you'd want to know that the horses are all doing well," he said.

Tracey and her mother gave him a look of gratitude, each for their own reasons.

"Joe, this is Caitlyn. Caitlyn, this is Joe. He's the head groom for the horse stables," David introduced.

"Welcome Caitlyn. I hope you enjoy your stay here at LLR."

"Hi Joe," Caitlyn replied. "I'm sure I will."

"Now Joe," Leo started. "Tracey is not allowed to ride for at least the next 10 days. I hope that you're going to see that she follows doctor's orders for once in her life."

Joe pretended to doff a hat. "Yes, ma'am," he replied with a grin.

Tracey scowled in response.

Caitlyn was hard pressed not to laugh. It was obvious that even though her children were all grown up, Leonora still ruled the roost.



The tour of the ground floor, though short in deference to her still healing injuries, introduced Caitlyn to the kitchen, the TV room and the 'baby' lift (as they called it), which, according to Leonora, had been installed due to Tracey's penchant for refusing to remain on the horses when going at full gallop.

Caitlyn's room was on the fifth floor, along with the rest of the family's, between Tracey's room and the study that they all used in addition to the one on the ground floor.

David offered to help her unpack, while explaining some of what happened on the farm.

"I'm not sure how much you know," he began.

"Not a lot. The house is a hotel sometimes, right? And you raise horses and cattle."

"Spot on. I look after the cattle sector of the farm. It's the main money-maker of the farm, but Owen and Tracey don't have the patience to deal with all the administration and planning that must be done with little direct interaction with individual animals.

"Tracey runs the horse sector. We raise racehorses, primarily with the main championships in mind. Owen is our jockey, but only after Tracey got too tall to meet the weight requirements without starving herself. But she still does a lot of preparatory training.

"Mom runs the hotel. It started out small, but demand is growing. We keep adding a couple of rondawels (a rondawel is a type of round hut; generally thatch roofed) each year and they never sit empty. In fact even before this past season started, we already had bookings for next season," David explained.

"Wow! So this is a really big operation you run here. How big is the farm itself?" Caitlyn asked.

David surveyed the room. They had unpacked her suitcase and everything was put away.

"Well seeing as we're done here, I'll take you up to the roof. We have a room up there that we use during the dry season to watch for fires, so you can see the most of the farm from there," he suggested.



The view from the glass-enclosed room, on the roof of the house, rendered Caitlyn speechless.

David turned her to face south and began pointing out the different areas of the farm.

"The farm is bordered by two roads and a mountain range. That east/west road that we travelled to get to the house forms the southern boundary. It sprouts another road, which forms the western boundary, but that road peters out at the base of the mountains to the north. Those mountains form our northern border. And do you see how the mountains eventually turn an almost perfect 90o angle to run south?"

Caitlyn nodded.

"Well that forms our eastern boundary."

"So what happens where? I mean you obviously can't have guests wandering around a camp that's being used by cattle."

"I was getting to that, O Impatient One," David replied bowing. The effect however, was ruined by the grin on his face.

"Very funny."

"Well if you must know. The house sits in the middle of the south border. The visitors have the run of land between the house, the south road and the western road to about a quarter of the way to the northern mountains."

"Including that little bitty mountain wanna-be?"

"Yup. That bitty mountain gives enough elevation for run-off to form a river that runs into the lake that you can just see through all the trees.

"The border of the cattle camp is from that 'quarter way to the mountains' to the north east corner, where the mountain turns and then everything from that north east corner to the south road is horse country," David explained as he moved his arm in demonstration.

"That's a lot of land for the cattle."

"Well, the cattle is the main producer of steady income to the farm and we've been expanding over the past few years. We're going to need more land soon to accommodate our operations."

"Impressive." Caitlyn paused for a beat. "So where did you find Tracey? All the nurse at the hospital could tell me was that you'd found her somewhere in the mountains."

"Well…" David turned to face east of northeast. "That mountain that forms the eastern border, is in fact two parallel ranges of peaks with a large plateau in between. We knew, from aerial surveys, that it was there, but could never work out how to get to it by land. It appears that Tracey did. She ran into trouble and her dog showed up at the front door and led us to her."

"Soooo? What had happened?"

"She'd been attacked by a mountain lion."

"I thought those were only found in North and South America."

"You're thinking of the cats also known as pumas. Yes those are called mountain lions. However many years ago South Africa had a type of lion called the Cape Mountain Lion."

"Which are extinct, right?"

"Well, the purebred's are. There were a few half breeds living in the mountains, which we thought we had all relocated but apparently we missed one," David explained. "That's the one that got her."

"So what happened to it?" Caitlyn asked.

"She did."

"She did? … Ooooh, I get it."

"Come on, lunch will be ready soon, so let's get downstairs and harass the cooks," David suggested with a grin.

***************

Lunch was a rowdy meal, quite unlike anything Caitlyn was used to, her father demanding silence be kept at all meals.

When the discussion turned to the question of what was going to be done over the next few days, Tracey made her view on Owen's activities clear.

She looked quite pointedly at him and then threw her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the horse stables.

"Tracey, Joe knows what he's doing. He doesn't need me to watch over his shoulder," Owen protested. "I'd rather keep you and Caitlyn company, seeing as David needs to head back to his cattle."

From the look on her face he had obviously misunderstood.

She grabbed his nearest wrist and pinched the skin over it, getting a fair finger full. She smirked at him.

"You're saying that I need the exercise not the horses," he questioned incredulously, while everyone laughed, including Tracey herself. "Oh, all right! I'll go and do my share of the exercising." He pretended to sulk for a moment before joining in the laughter.